Imagine going to bed one night thinking that tomorrow would just be like the day you had yesterday:
wake up, get the kids up, make breakfasts and kids lunches, glance at the family schedule crammed packed with activities, rush out the door with your coffee mug and kids in tow, get them to school, and navigate the commute to get to work for that meeting that starts as soon as you walk in the door.

Except, that’s not what happened at all.

Instead, you woke up and the news was headlining that the world was shut down and you have at least 20 texts between work, family and your kid’s school that everything is closed until further notice.

How mind-blowingly scary to find yourself in a situation that you could have never predicted as a parent. You’re sitting here thinking, what do I do now?! What’s the right thing for us to do now?! So much information, so many resources, so many people talking, but no real answers.

As parents, we fully expect that there is a level of unpredictability that happens when you have kids. You can plan everything to a T, and still, something doesn’t go to plan which throws everything else out of balance. However, we have this incredible innate ability to adapt and shift and take things as they come. We prove to ourselves repeatedly how resilient we are and how we can absolutely do this (among the other hard things we do), but the pandemic totally swept our feet out from under us. This was more than a missed nap, or an unexpected ear infection in one of your kiddos, this was completely life-altering.

At this point, it feels exhausting to talk about this pandemic (quietly frankly, I’m exhausted to still be talking about it), something that we desperately want to forget about because we just want to move forward, not unlike a trauma response. However, it is important to acknowledge the family unit NOW, post-COVID, compared to what it was pre-COVID. This acknowledgement allows for some self-healing to take place and to open the door to give ourselves some grace for what we ALL have been through.

The family dynamic has been disrupted in unprecedented ways since the pandemic began. Parents are now working from home, children completing virtual schooling, and ultimately, living a different form of isolation. I have found that the dynamics between the parents and children have become more tense (due to parents having to become teachers, and children having to learn from their parents). A lot of parents have experienced increased tension in the home and overall, a decrease in the quality of the relationship they have with their school aged child. 

Other Things You May Have Experienced During the Pandemic:

• Stretched resources. We went from what felt like a variety of resources to none. No one to watch the kids, no family to just pop over to help, no tutors for school, no camps for summer, nothing. It was all you or nothing.
• Blurred lines between work life and home life. If anything, we learned that technology is awesome, but gosh it kind of sucks too. We took interpersonal communication and forced it to work within the virtual environment. We stripped back the value of face-to-face interactions and became more distant.
• Had to celebrate life milestones…seemingly alone. Look, zoom parties are fun, but at the end of the day, not being able to have your 1 year old’s birthday party the way you imagined it for forever stings. Smash cakes and computers don’t mix. What about the drive-by events? The “here catch this present as I drive by, congratulations!” It’s not fair, it’s not organic, not the way life was supposed to work.
• You were forced to grieve in the most unnatural ways. In all of this we forget that some lost loved ones to COVID and didn’t get the opportunity to say goodbye, leaving them to grieve in the worst way possible, alone. Celebrations of life were more like real-life demonstrations of the “stark realities of our world”.

It hurts to admit the decline in the relationship we have with our children as a direct result of the pandemic, but being forced into a nuanced version of solitary confinement, it would be incredibly difficult for any relationship to go unscathed. Children have needed increased support in: emotion regulation, effective listening, and communication skills.

So what did that mean for us as parents? 

We became dual authoritarian figures, leading some children to become more defiant. Admission of this allows us to sit with that uncomfortability, but it also allows for the development of some self-awareness, that will hopefully lead to some restoration within the new family unit.

Ok, so you’ve admitted that life sucked and you didn’t like your family the way you wanted to, but exactly HOW do we make our way back? Well, if history has taught us anything, it has shown us that reconstruction and restoration can rise from mere ashes. That in all the awful things that can happen, we somehow subconsciously just start fixing it, but we start with the foundation.

3 Steps Toward Restoring the Family Unit:

• Acknowledgement. It’s safe to say most of us can acknowledge that COVID threw us many curveballs, but it’s important to acknowledge that maybe we didn’t cope with those changes as well as we had hoped. Isolation in every form causes a deterioration in mental wellbeing AND is a common symptom of depression. The pandemic caused forced isolation for prolonged periods of time. Not only has this been difficult for those already struggling with depression, but also has taken a toll on everyone in some way, shape or form. Even if you didn’t struggle with your mental health prior to the pandemic, it is completely normal that with all we have endured, that you may not be in the same headspace now as you were pre-pandemic. Acknowledging this is a first step in being able to heal and move forward.
• Attunement (or emotional mirroring). This is done by ensuring our children understand we are hearing them, listening to them and meeting their needs. Children need a space where they feel comfortable enough to communicate their needs with their parents, with a sense of safety and validation. This is reinforced by both parents, a skill that truly needs to be worked on within the family unit as a whole.
• Self-Care. Seems like this is the never-ending piece of advice, but it is because of the weight it holds in helping us sustain our routines. Parents have needed increased support during the pandemic and feel a different type of stress within their family dynamic. Self-care is as important as ever. It is imperative each member of the family continues to explore their unique sense of self, while also working to reconnect with their parents, siblings and children. 

As we try and get back to a more “normal” routine, and normal sense of self (accepting what we all have experienced, and how it will continue to shape us moving forward) is why therapeutic family work post pandemic, is imperative to healthy family function. We know as parents that having so many resources is a blessing, but can also be overwhelming. If you and your family feel like you are still struggling to move forward with confidence, we can help. Our providers are especially skilled in working with families as one unit, so each reach your goals together.